“Hitler was right.”

Now that we have your attention, it should give you a good idea why edgelords have been rearing their ugly head on the internet a lot more lately. Not just edgelords, mind you, but Pinoy edgelords. 

Yes, you heard it right: despite all our declarations of Filipinos being a polite, god-fearing society, we have people today who think it’s a bright idea to cosplay as the fuhrer, despite every single history class we have telling them how horrible this is. And the more we see these types, we have to wonder… why is it happening now, and more often, it seems? Is it a generational thing?

8. It’s (somewhat) a generational thing

In 2024, we are about less than 20 years away from World War II being a century old. Nearly everyone who was alive at the time and affected by the war is no longer alive. Time has lessened the impact of these atrocities, and to kids today, it’s about as alien to them as the Battle of Mactan was to us: we just heard of it, and we’re not going to bother listening to Lito Lapid teaching us about it. 

Couple that with one more fact about this generation: the internet has allowed us to see a lot of things we should never have, and these kids are a lot more desensitized to horrible stuff than previous generations who somehow managed to not directly encounter these horrible events in human history. You thought kids today were oversensitive? Maybe some of them are, but quite a few of them get off on triggering these so-called oversensitive people, be they kids or otherwise, because…

7. It’s all about clout

Another generational thing that’s hard to understand is the need for online clout. It’s a lot like the classic pursuit of fame, but less tangible, and far less rewarding. Where other people pursued fame and became celebrities, kids today do it online and while some do end up as influencers, aka celebrities in the digital age, others are happy turning themselves into immortalizing themselves, even if in the worst way possible.

The internet has been a game of one-upmanship, to the point that people will invoke Hitler because they know it gets a reaction. That’s it. That’s the point: getting a rise out of people. Unfortunately for them…

6. They don’t understand the consequences of their actions

Because they’re kids. Which isn’t a generational thing. At all. It’s more of an age thing. Because we were all kids back then, too, and we all did stupid things, but the advantage most of us older people have is that a lot of the stupid stuff we did happened offline.

When kids today do something dumb online, or worse, they get bullied online, it doesn’t matter how many years down the road, that stuff is going to stay. So they do something dumb, and it gets immortalized. One might argue some of us might have done even worse than what these kids did, but no internet = it only happened to the people who know about it.  And because they don’t understand how bad it could get for them once they get the reaction they so crave…

5. They end up doubling down instead of cutting it out

While the Third Reich kid seems to have apologized, a lot of Pinoy kids, especially under the guise of anonymity, would instead double down on their horrible behavior. Not understanding the consequences of their actions also means that their behavior can continue to escalate until it finally catches up with them. In most cases, being anonymous means it never catches up with them.

4. They’ve always been there

The Philippines has always had its share of edgelords, they just have new and exciting platforms to showcase it. If you don’t think that’s true, then maybe remember the fact that Pinoys have a notorious reputation for being toxic in the global esports scene. That stereotype did not come out of nowhere.

3. We actually encourage this behavior

Anyone who’s been on Twitter long enough knows that some people engage in what is known as rage baiting — aka ticking off people to get them to engage with your terrible content. After all, more shares, reactions, and comments tell a social media platform that your content is getting attention. That algorithm doesn’t care if all that attention is negative, and to a mind that has grown up with social media front and center, any attention is welcome — even negative attention. Heck, some people even monetized rage! And that’s a very sobering thing to realize.

2. We aren’t really doing anything to stop it

There’s a saying that goes: FAFO. You F around, and you find out. The problem is, with us being so quick to jump from topic to topic on the internet, very few people ever really find out. The reality is that cancel culture isn’t really a thing, especially not in the Philippines, where everyone gets so many second chances. So if there are all these benefits to behaving horribly online, why even stop?

1. Ultimately, there is clearly a failure of institutions here

Whether it be teachers being unable to do their jobs, or distractions online preventing the learning from sinking in, our hot take is that kids today, and even kids back then (except they didn’t have the internet to put their stupidity on record), end up being edgelords because they don’t know any better.

That’s not an excuse, by the way: that’s an indictment of a system that miseducates them and rewards them for ill behavior in the first place. To a large extent, every important institution in society has failed these kids in some way, and we’re reaping all the ill effects. But surely, nobody can say that they did Nazi that coming.

What are your thoughts on the rise of the Pinoy edgelord? Sound off in the comments!